Book Review: The Indecent Theologies of Marcella Althaus-Reid: Voices From Asia and Latin America

Abstract

male entitlement that, she knows, lie at the heart or form the ‘trunk’ (p. 59) of this issue. Collins is conscious that evangelical Christian culture (p. 83) is profoundly invested in conventional (outmoded?) gender norms. Thus, for example, she makes reference to the practices of ‘Christian Domestic Discipline’ whose website advocates physical punishment of ‘unrepentant’ wives and children (p. 27). But though she sees this as ‘distorted theology’, she does not appear to feel, for example, that Biderman’s identification of ‘demonstrating omnicompetence’ as a key element in the torturer’s playbook (p. 19) raises issues for the trope of Almighty God itself. Perhaps she feels that the distortion comes from the fact that whereas God is actually ‘all-mighty’, human males go wrong by aping this divine trait. This is certainly an argument that has been employed by abusers in the past – that their entitlement is modelled by (a masculine) God. She does not often use the term ‘Almighty’ in reference to her own grace or Jesus-focussed spirituality though it does come up in the chapter ‘“What would Jesus do? (All that theology stuff)” as “an almighty force”’ (p. 80). For this reader, the spectre of God represented as Alpha Male (p. 71) still hangs in the air. If the Almighty is a toxic trope or mode of masculinity for human beings, then it is equally if not more toxic when associated with God. Moreover, from Collins’ perspective, it seems to exemplify a ‘Do as I say, not as I do!’ approach. If grace is available only if we give our absolute trust to an Almighty power, we give that demand for total devotion, for the taming and control of our whole selves by another, a dangerously seductive lustre. There is clearly more to be discussed here, and theology would not appear to be Collins’ first priority in this book. Her priority – beyond reaching out to suffering women – is, perhaps, rather to suggest faith as a legitimate resource. And she surely makes a point when she draws attention to the fact that feminist women – even those who support DV survivors – are sometimes less than sympathetic to women for whom their faith is an important part of who they are or an important part of how they have been able to get beyond their experiences of violent abuse (p. 30) without losing their whole selves in the process. Arguably, practices of genuine piety at odds with so-called ‘secular’ norms are not only or necessarily regressive in feminist terms (Mahmood, Princeton University Press, 2004).